RI Lacks services for poor: World Bank
RI Lacks services for poor: World Bank
Fitri Wulandari, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Services for the poor in Indonesia are still insufficient and the
government has yet to allocate money to make services more
available for the poor, the World Bank says.
World Bank's lead economist Jeffrey Hammel said that as in
other developing countries, services in Indonesia sometimes still
failed the poor.
"It means, services are not available sometimes. But when they
are available, the services are often bad," Hammel told a media
briefing on Friday while launching the World Development Report
in Jakarta.
Hammel said a study on education and health service in
Indonesia paints a very disappointing picture. The study, which
was based on surprise visits to public schools and primary health
facilities, shows teacher absenteeism rates in public schools is
18 percent, while health official absenteeism in health clinics
is 42 percent.
Most of the staff did not fulfill their duties because either
they were being training, performing non-teaching government
duties or simply shirking their responsibilities.
Janet Hohnen, World Bank Indonesia director for human
development, added that the lack of education and health services
was mostly because of the inadequate budget provided by the
government.
However, Hohnen said the World Bank and the government had
been working together to improve it.
Hammel noted that decentralization had given an opportunity to
provide a better service for the poor as it made it easier for
the poor to have their voices heard in decision making.
"It is easier for people to talk to a local politician than a
national politician," Hammel said.
The poor should be given chances to get involved in setting
priorities in service development and the monitoring of service
providers.
"For services to be successful, poor people need to be at the
center of service delivery," he said.
Indonesia could also copy the so-called citizen score card
scheme, which has been successfully implemented in Bangalore,
India.
"Citizen score card" is a survey conducted by people in cities
where they rank the quality of public services, including garbage
collection, the processing of driver's licenses, water supplies,
schools and medicine.
Results of the survey would be published in the media.
Hammel said the system would work well if it was supported by
a free press.
In Bangalore, there was some improvement in the services for
the poor thanks to the "citizen score card".
"Some have been embarrassed by bad publicity in the media so
they improved their services," Hammel said.